“Are you ready?”
He nodded, with a sort of moan.
Kathia turned, and there was that strange light in her eyes again, like that morning, when she emerged from the water.
Kathia came closer, so that he could see better.
Her eyes were blue, the lightest of light blues, crisscrossed with tiny multicolored streaks, from yellow to orange, from green to cobalt. They seemed almost phosphorescent. Helias had never seen anything like it, nor imagined such a thing could exist. His first reaction was one of fear, almost. In fact, his hair stood up. It wasn’t the Kathia he knew, and an alien glance has something inimical about it, triggering an instinctive, ancestral fear.
She noticed and murmured, “Don’t be afraid, it’s still me.”
He continued to look at her, asking himself how much the glasses altered the colors.
“No, they’re really like that, or almost.” she said, anticipating his question.
Bit by bit he got used to them. More than used to them: he thought they were beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.
“If you like, I’ll put the lenses back on. Or the glasses.”
He shook his head. He couldn’t stop looking.
“You didn’t have them this morning at the lake, either. You had your eyes half closed and I never looked at them close up. But at a certain point I noticed a strange glimmer, while I was filming you. And so your eyes are adapted to this light, you don’t need aids of any kind.”
“Actually they’re adapted to any kind of light. All they need is a handful of photons at any frequency between the far infrared and the near ultraviolet. They’re the result of some sophisticated genetics. First we modified them to adapt them to the light of our planet, and then we perfected them for any occasion. They adapt automatically. I can add Alkenian contact lenses or glasses, it doesn’t change much.”
“But you don’t want anybody to know, and so you do what everybody else does.”
“Right. Nobody must know that our race exists. Except for you and a few others.”
“Why?”
“As I was telling you, our civilization is hundreds of years ahead of Earth. Not so much because of technology or genetic engineering, which we use very sparingly, despite appearances, but because of our psychic qualities and even more so because of our philosophy of life, and the ethics that derives from it. In a way, we got over our initial enthusiasm for the extraordinary and almost unlimited potential offered by scientific and technological advances. We understood where the catch was. For every exciting innovation, there’s always another side to the coin. That doesn’t mean we decided to go back to the stone age. Far from it. We just became more prudent and developed a certain mistrust. The principle we go by is that of taking minimum action. In other words, we introduce only those innovations that we believe to be indispensable or very important. There are special councils that scrutinize every proposal. With our knowledge of biogenetics we could do practically anything, but we limit ourselves to the strictly necessary. And that brings us to the crux of your question. What would happen if our advanced knowledge, which we use, or at least believe we use, wisely and with the utmost caution, were to end up in the wrong hands, like those of the earthlings, for instance, who might be in good faith but are inexpert and primitive?”
“So why don’t you just stay quietly at home on your own planet instead of gallivanting around all over, running the risk of being discovered?”
“And wait for them to discover us on their own. It’s about—or rather, it was about to happen—you know? Fortunately we acted just in time.”
“Meaning?”
“I’ll tell you when you’ve calmed down. You don’t have to feel wounded in your identity as an earthling….”
“Sorry to be so ingenuous. After all, I’m just a poor idiotic earthling.”
“Don’t be so touchy. You’re doing yourself a disservice. That’s just the way things are. Without insulting anybody. You of all people, you’re usually so clear-headed and intuitive.”
They fell silent for a while. Helias with downcast eyes.
“You’re right. Sorry.”
“You don’t have to excuse yourself.”
“My bottom is sore from sitting on this rock. Shall we continue up the path?”
“I was about to suggest it. My bottom, though much more evolved, doesn’t feel any better than yours.”
They rounded the north shore in silence, while Helias tried to get his head around all that unexpected and surprising information.
After a short climb up the mountainside, the path began to drop toward the eastern shore, gentler, with rolling meadows and clumps of shrubs, finally reaching the tributary river, its broad churning surface spanned by a narrow wooden and stone bridge that enabled them to continue their circuit of the lake.
“According to our rules, we couldn’t visit Earth before our departure. In the meantime, more than two centuries before, we had invented transmission, or we had put it into practice, rather, starting from the theory existing on Earth, but which involved problems and difficulties that at the time were insurmountable. We patrolled the nearby planets, especially Alkenia, where we knew the earthlings would arrive one day, and where they would be able to discover us easily. We had to keep an eye on them, and so we built two bases on this planet.”
“Where?”
“One’s very far from here. Almost at the opposite end of the planet. The other is right in front of you, inside the mountain, behind the castle.”
Helias turned toward the lake and the far shore, dominated by the castle, and looked at the mountain that in turn dominated the castle. From where they were standing, the mountain was much higher and more imposing than it looked from the opposite shore.
“And so it was you people who made sure that the Kusmiri Center was built right here. How did you do that? And why?”
“As you know, much of Alkenia’s scientific work takes place here. That way we can monitor your progress from close up, it’s no accident that I’m here as an archivist. Not only, but we can use our base, which we reach through the castle, without arousing suspicion. Here we pass as earthlings doing our jobs. Anywhere else, our comings and goings would have attracted unwelcome attention. How did we do it? The way we always do, ever since we started keeping watch over you. We go to Earth, assume an earthling identity, we infiltrate where we want to, in all the key points, and in practice we monitor just about everything.”
“It can’t be all that easy to ‘invent’ new earthlings, from one day to the next.”
“We can breach any of your archives or computer systems and edit them, without anybody realizing what happened.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong. So, a little less than twenty years before your departure from Earth, you transmitted yourselves there, in order to arrive a bit afterwards, as your rules require, and you started pulling all the strings, like puppeteers….”
“Almost. You’re pretty close. In reality, though, things are a bit more complicated.”
They were crossing the bridge, and the noise of the rushing river nearly covered their voices. They stopped to admire the view, and once again Helias regretted not having brought his camera. A breeze had come up, ruffling their hair and the water, breaking the surface of the lake into myriads of tiny reflected suns that rose and fell in the tossing waves.
They walked hand in hand, like a couple of sweethearts anywhere, and continued toward the south shore, with its welcoming meadows and small yellow and brown trees, where the lake found its natural outlet and another bridge led back to the castle.
“What’s your planet called?”
“Thaýma. Which in ancient Greek means ‘marvel’. A naive name, but that’s how it appeared to our ancestors. You should see it.”
“I’m counting on it.”
“I’m glad you’re here with us, Helias.”
“I just hope I don’t disappoint you. I’m anxious to know what you expect from me, but I see you’ll have to gi
ve me a lot more information before getting to the point. But what makes you think that I won’t refuse, or that I won’t betray you? Or are you thinking of bumping me off if I do?”
“I know you’re joking. Do you think I’m capable of killing somebody? You, especially?”
“Well, maybe not you. But what do I know about the others?”
“We’re nonviolent. Inasmuch as possible. In any case, human life is sacred for us too.”
“But you’re sure I’ll accept?”
“Practically yes. I know you well, for three months by now. I’d be an idiot if I got everything wrong.”
“Tell me more.”
“To intervene on Earth, and thus cancel all traces of our planet’s existence, we had to use transmission. Transmission as you know it makes it possible to zero the distance between the two planets and the people being transmitted are unaware of the passage of time, but if you want to go back to where you came from, or even just send a message, it would get there forty years later. Hardly convenient.”
“‘There’s the trick’ Mattheus told me, and he added that I’d know about it ‘in due time’.”
Kathia had that look again, that sober, respectable expression she had mocked him with the first evening. To get even, Helias tried to pinch her, but she ran off. He went after her and, tripping, brought them both down, rolling in the grass. Then he made a dive and kissed her.
“You’re a monster” she said, smiling.
“Listen to who’s talking. The abominable spacewoman from the unknown planet.”
“Oh, really? Not too abominable for you this morning, I’d say.”
“Because you hadn’t shown me those horrible eyes yet.”
And he slipped a hand under her light coveralls.
“You’re just a horrible monster. Always ready with those hands. And with something else too….”
They heard voices approaching and they hastened to regain their composure.
A group of people appeared from behind the rise. Probably back from an excursion in the area. It was a holiday and the weather was magnificent. Nevertheless, Helias was amazed at how few people ventured far from the Center. Maybe it was that strange, weak light that put them off. And the idea of being on a planet part of which was still unknown, where you don’t know what the trees and the flowers are called, and the grass is thick and rough. Where everything takes on an unusual color, the color of dreams and not of reality.
And yet many of the inhabitants must have been here for a good few years. But apparently they still weren’t used to it. Or they were simply lazy and incurious. And they weren’t photography buffs.
Kathia, ever cautious, put her glasses back on. They let the group pass and started off again.
“For transmission, you need to have a receiving station, similar to the transmitting station. Both have an antimatter ring, a few dozen meters in diameter, held together and protected by an intense magnetic field. You already know these things?”
“Very vaguely, yes.”
“At the time of transmission, the craft, or rather the spaceship, is launched into the ring and at the same time the magnetic field is released for a few moments. The spaceship is incorporated in an equal mass of antimatter. The result, as you know from elementary physics, is an electromagnetic wave that propagates at the speed of light. But it has to know where to go. So there has to be a receiving station, ready to separate the two components again. One of the most critical points is precisely that of maintaining the identity of the two parts. The theory was known on Earth, but they were way behind in solving the technical problems. To make a long story short, we went to the appointment on Earth bringing with us a good stock of antimatter, which they didn’t know how to harness yet on Earth. We infiltrated the research institutes of the day and, taking the necessary time, we ‘reinvented’ all the technical details that were needed. In the meantime, Alkenia had been colonized and, starting from Earth, we infiltrated this planet too, to ‘help’ organize the receiving station, among other things.”
“There’s something that escapes me here. Why help the earthlings with the transmission technique? Didn’t that also increase the risk of being discovered?”
“No, far from it. They would have traveled anyway, even without transmission. With transmission, on the other hand, we had an enormous advantage, but you don’t have what you need in order to understand that yet.”
“The advantage is the ‘trick’?”
“Bravo! Yes. With normal transmission trips are, yes, faster, but the time that goes by between the outward and homeward bound legs are still unacceptably long to permit repeated and efficient action, as you earthlings know perfectly well, as it takes you decades to exchange information. We had the key, or in other words the ‘trick’. We could practically reduce round-trip times to zero, in a way you would never have been able to figure out on your own. Mattheus and I didn’t leave here forty years ago to go to Earth, but only a few months ago. Once the two stations were ready and interplanetary voyages were replaced by transmission, we could also roll out our ‘back-now’ technique. We could go back and forth as if the distance was really nothing. From the Earth to here, twenty years went by, same as for you, but we used back-now from here to Earth, and that way we got the twenty years back. In theory, we could do the whole trip in one day, as if we were going between two adjacent planets. It didn’t matter if what was regarded as ‘now’ in the two planets happened to be twenty years apart. Only our first people, the ones who ‘prepared’ the stations, had to actually experience the real distance. They went to Earth normally, leaving forty years before they could have returned. And those of us who stayed here heard from them only after forty years.”
“Once the stations were ready, couldn’t the back-now technique be used from there to here?”
“No. You can only do it in one direction. Otherwise we would break our rule of not interfering with the past. We could have left from here, gone to Earth, and come back here forty years ago. That wouldn’t have been good.”
They were crossing the second bridge and were nearly to the end of their circuit of the lake. They could already see the swimmers on the west shore, below the castle. There were more of them than there had been a few hours earlier. Now the water must be warm, even for him.
Neither of them wanted to mix in with that mob, or go back to the castle yet. They sat down in a meadow again. Kathia had picked up a few sticks and she arranged them in front of herself.
“See? These two vertical sticks, parallel to each other, represent the histories of the two planets. The one on the left is the Earth’s time axis, which runs from the bottom upwards, while the one on the right is Alkenia’s. My ancestors left at this point of the Earth axis, heading for Alkenia. Then they were thrown back in time and ended up here, on Thaýma, on this third stick near Alkenia, much lower down. Here they waited for the flow of time to bring them within range of Earth, a few years after their departure, and they went there, diagonally, along this blade of grass, while around twenty years went by on the planets. Ten years or so later the transmissions began, and earthlings and Thaymites could reach Alkenia along these blades of grass, diagonally from the bottom to the top. At this point, however, the Thaymites can also make the trip back, along the same blades, but from the top to the bottom. And subsequent history is a series of parallel diagonal blades.”
Helias picked a blade of grass of his own.
“And this? This never happened?” he asked, placing the blade in the opposite direction, from Alkenia to Earth.
“This is what happens normally for information and exchanges of material. For human lives, it’s too risky. Nobody can guarantee that the receiving station on Earth is working, after forty years. It’s prohibited. We can’t go to the future, in a spaceship, and then, if everything’s working, return with back-now and say ‘okay, go ahead’, or even just send a message to confirm. Because that way we’d know the Earth’s future and we couldn’t interfere with its past, or in
other words, we could no longer do anything now.”
“How did you manage the first time with Alkenia? How did you know that the station here was okay?”
“The transmission of information, meaning electromagnetic signals, is a trivial problem, it doesn’t need antimatter and it was ready almost immediately. For that too, there’s a sort of back-now, and so we were in continual contact.”
“But the earthlings didn’t know about it. How were you able to convince them?”
“Well, even then there were simulations of what was going on Alkenia. When the probability that the station wasn’t ready yet dropped below two percent, some of us volunteered, knowing that the risk was almost null. Then the probability kept dropping and by now the ice was broken, and so the earthlings started volunteering too, and finally news arrived that everything had gone as expected.”
“Just as well they didn’t know about ‘your’ black hole, which doubtless wasn’t included in the simulations. Otherwise they’d have been a bit less trusting.”
Kathia kept looking at the time.
“Do you have an appointment?”
“Yes. Excuse me a moment.”
And she pulled out her ‘cell’. She, too, spoke in a strange dialect, like Mattheus on the spaceship.
“I’ve got to go, will you come with me as far as the castle?”
Helias, rising, looked at the mountain.
“Yes, there.” she confirmed. “There’s a meeting.”
They started off.
“When will I know the rest? When will I see you again?”
“I don’t think this evening. We usually finish late. Tomorrow morning I’ve got an appointment with the optometrist, for this business of the contact lenses that bother me. Right afterwards? Shall I get in touch with you myself?”
“Yes, but anyway give me your code.”
“‘olsson’, with two s’s, space ‘k’.”
“That’s your surname?”
“Yes, the Earth one.”
“Why do you change name?”
“We do it when it’s advisable. In my case it’s not to reveal a connection that might cause comment.”
The Dark Arrow of Time Page 5
